What do Google's Q2 results mean for advertisers?

Questions are starting to arise around Google’s future; can it be toppled by Facebook for the top tech spot? And what are its plans for advertisers? Stephanie Carr, Marin Sofrware’s VP of Customer Success thinks that Google’s future priorities seem to lie elsewhere.

Google is leaving clues which are worth keeping an eye on. Despite $15.5bn of the $17.3bn (£11.2bn) the company made in the first quarter of this year coming from advertising revenue, Google’s priorities seem to lie elsewhere.

From driverless cars, to renewable energy, to wearable technology; Google is ramping up its levels of spend in a multitude of non-ad based directions.

Just this week it was announced that Google search results for hotel bookings will give users the opportunity to book through Google rather than a brand’s website. This has the potential to alienate advertisers in the future.

It’s time to broaden horizons. The latest figures show that in the UK, Google has a market share of 89% with competitors such as Bing lagging behind at 6%.

But Google’s growth is slowing and Bing’s slice of the pie is increasing. The younger brother boasts a near 20% rise in the UK over the last 12 months and one in five of US-based desktop searches were made using Bing, according to comScore’s March data.

Bing offers great value for money. In fact last year, we saw that Bing Ads had an average CPC of $.78 compared to $.93 on Google (Q3 2014). In direct comparisons of verticals, Bing had a CPC equal to or lower than that of Google in seven of out of eight. In verticals with an older target market, Bing can be even more effective as its users are traditionally weighted towards a higher age than Google’s, especially 55-64 year olds.

As results today prove, don’t ditch the advertising juggernaut just yet but it certainly makes sense to invest search budget proportionally across these two search engines.